Transplanted in Texas

I laid out the plots for my book and had all of my blog posts prepared so the blog could handle being virtually abandoned for 30 days. And then it hit me. I simply can't do NaNoWriMo this year. I have a house to maintain, a baby to watch and make sure he doesn't hurt himself or anything else, and keep random things out of his mouth. There won't be enough time, between feeding my husband and my son, the horses and holidays, to get fifty thousand words in. And if I don't think I have a chance of winning, I'm not inclined to start something. So NaNoWriMo 2017 is a bust. No, less than a bust. It never began. We'll see about next year. I might have enough time. But November is an awful month for it, because of Thanksgiving. In other news, I am releasing my book, "A.P. Indy", on November 11! It has over 200 pages and will be available on Amazon and CreateSpace, among other places. I can't even write a blog post without the kid climbing u

Wednesday evening, I had a random idea to do a shoot while Jack was eating. So I tied the dog up to keep him from doing anything to ruin the shoot or clobber my son, and brought my son out with a picnic blanket (aka quilt by Ma) and a couple of his favorite things. I wanted to show how much my son loves to be outside at the age of seven months. As soon as he could crawl proficiently, he would beeline for the door as soon as it was opened. It is the only place he enjoys more than my lap. It is getting chillier, and so he'd been wearing pants and socks all day and there was no worry about getting him all dirty. So once the horse was tied up and eating, I set him down and let him go. Of course, I made sure he didn't go too far, for he was bent on going to see the old gelding for a little while there. The blanket was obviously abandoned in no time, and only once was he placed back on it. I got a few pictures of him sitting gnawing on his Nuby cup, which he loves, and one o

This is the essence of Cookie. Ever since he was a kitten (shown here at six weeks of age), he has been a lazy, sleepy kitten. Too lazy to fend off the dog, and sleepy enough to be lying on the chair right now by the table, fast asleep. It's Duke who drags up mice and rats, among other things. The cat wanders around, fends for himself at night and while we're away, and then stays inside during the day while we're home. Because he won't keep the dog away from his food, so he has to have it inside or starve. He's a gentle soul, but still a kitten. He can be crazy one minute and asleep the next, crashed on the floor. And he is quite lazy. He's not very good at cleaning up in the litter box, often scraping the wall instead of the litter. It gets pretty annoying. Cookie enjoys curling up on or beside people, and does pretty well when Yance wants to clobber him. He also likes to knead us and has a terrible time getting the hint when we want him to leave. B

This month I'm getting down to the crunch of preparing to release my book (yay!) and put down the first words of my next one. Both of those are happening next month. I am also trying to decide what to do for my sweetheart's birthday, which is at the end of next month. Fortunately, I have given myself plenty of time to figure that out, so that's not too rushed. This year I will be working on my first draft of a book full of short stories and poems. All brand-new. Yeah, it's going to be fun. November is turning out to be even more hectic than last year, which had NaNoWriMo, a reenactment, Thanksgiving, and also hubby's birthday - and I still got nearly 90,000 words in on my A.P. Indy book (it's not that long anymore). This year I'm adding a book release to that list, and also will be keeping track of a seven to eight month old baby boy at the same time. Yikes! By the way, we're expecting a tooth at any moment, he crawls, pulls himself up,